Thread: A discovery I just made

I just finished shaving for the first time in a week and I made a discovery I thought I would share so it might help someone else. I have been shaving for a few months and been doing 3 pass shaves for about a month. The first pass was fine but the second and third pass was always real uncomfortable. I thought it might be getting time to get my razor honed. Today though since my facial hair was so long I realized the direction it was growing was different then I thought. I shaved according to my new discovery and had the most comfortable shave so far since doing multiple passes. I wanted to tell anyone who might be in my shoes to make sure your XTG pass is actually XTG and not ATG. Hope this info helps someone, it sure made me have a good shave.

It takes a while and alot of faceturbating to figure out all the growth patterns on ones face.

Great Discovery!

For a lot of people the beard actually grows at more an angle in the direction of the ear so that when you are shaving across the grain direction or from the ear to the mouth, you are actually shaving against the grain and do not have to shave in the direction from the jawline up to the eye. This should really help you to improve your shaves.

Enjoy,

Lynn

In the old days barbers who were trained to do straight shaves learned face mapping for each customer was the most important thing after learning how to manipulate the actual razor.

This is good info. I am also new to straight razor shaving and am having the same trouble. So from the posts, am I correct to assume that shaving against the grain is what causes irritation even if it is on the second or third pass?

Originally Posted by BeltFed80

This is good info. I am also new to straight razor shaving and am having the same trouble. So from the posts, am I correct to assume that shaving against the grain is what causes irritation even if it is on the second or third pass?

I'm thinking the irritation on ATG is more an issue of not having your razor angled properly. A good angle for ATG should be no more than 5 degrees and you need to stretch the skin as much as possible.

Now the OP makes a good point regarding beard mapping, because often, what you believe to be XTG, may in fact be ATG, thus causing irritation, razor burn, etc.

I have to jump in on this too. I had a very similar experience. As a pre-curser to getting my razors in the mail I let my hair grow for two days. I didn't have a razor for those days so I just spent time reading threads and read about face mapping. It prompted me to look at my own growth a little more closely (which I hadn't done in many years). Turns out my first pass was WTG on my cheeks but XTG on my neck (a problem area for me). My neck whiskers grow from my chin outward in a circle. I'm almost positive that years ago they grew hap-hazardly but I suppose that over time these things could change. I remember reading years ago that shaving in one direction would train your whiskers to grow parallel to that direction. Don't know if that's true. Doesn't seem like it. But the idea that they could change direction makes SOME sense. My barber used to say as much about the hair on my head.

That's kind of off topic. BUT, the point is, it may benefit a guy to let the whiskers grow for a few days (or however long you need to get a good idea of growth direction and patterns), and to adjust your strokes accordingly. Thanks to doing this I'm getting better shaves from my safety razor while I wait for my straight razors to come back from honing.

Great post, this is why I have a couple of smaller razors. They really help chop the hair at the goofy angles around my neck just under the jaw line. I also seem to have better luck with round point razors in tight spots.

I find that the razor tells me which direction the hairs grow MUCH more reliably than feeling with my hand, or looking a 3 day stubble in the mirror. The direction also seems to change a little based on which direction I stretch the skin from, and how hard I stretch the skin.

ie: On the 2nd pass, and using a 20-30 degree angle:
WTG feels like it's not cutting anything (unless you use pressure -don't).
ATG feels very irritating to the skin, and often gets "stuck" (since you are using a WTG angle).
XTG feels like it's cutting about 1/2 as much as the 1st pass going WTG and is about the same amount of irritating to the skin as the 1st WTG pass.

ps: I find that using No inward pressure at all on any pass, plus using a lower angle on XTG, and an very low angle on ATG eliminates skin irritation that lasts longer than shaving 1/4 of my face. ie: For XTG, I make the spine about twice as close to my face as it was for WTG, and for ATG, I make it twice as close as it was for WTG.

Facetubating... that's just awesome.